BY JACOB BRIGHT
The Independent National Electoral Commission has thrown its weight behind the planned diaspora voting bill.
Speaking to The Point about what it was doing and its preparedness regarding diaspora voting, spokesman of the Commission, Festus Okoye, said, “The processes and procedures of the commission are regulated by law. If you look at Section 49 of the Electoral Act, it says that any person intending to vote with the voter’s card shall present himself to a presiding officer at the polling unit in the constituency in which his name is registered in the voters’ register. The presiding officer, on being satisfied that the name of the person is on the register of voters, issues him a ballot paper, and also indicates on the register that the person has voted.
“So, the implication is that before you can vote in any election, you must be a registered voter. Secondly, you must also present yourself to a registration officer during the election. Now, the second implication is that if you also look at both the legal and constitutional frameworks for the registration of voters, it provides that any individual who wants to register as a voter must go personally, no proxy registration, to a registration centre, and register. Those are basically the requirements of section 10, for instance, of the Electoral Act. Thus, unless some of those sections of the law are amended, it will be next to impossibility to do diaspora voting, and that is at one level.”
Continuing, Okoye said, “At the second level is the fact that for diaspora voting to happen, we must have a valid registration of Nigerians who are outside the country. Now, when people talk about diaspora voting, they talk about people living in the United States and United Kingdom only. But those in Chad, those in Benin Republic, those in South Sudan are included as people in diaspora. So, the mechanism must be worked out very clearly, and if they also have to vote, the implication is that they have to also establish polling units in the embassies of the different countries where Nigerians are, or alternatively, when we begin internet voting, people can now vote wherever they reside.
“But as far as the commission is concerned, anytime the law is amended, we have a very clear legal framework; we will begin to work out mechanisms and modalities for diaspora voting. So, as a commission, we are not against diaspora voting. It’s just that there are constitutional, legal and practical issues involved that must be sorted out.”
The INEC spokesperson was also asked whether it was true that diaspora voting will favour politicians.
He replied, “I am not a clairvoyant, and so can’t see tomorrow. And I really cannot tell you in concrete term how it will favour an individual. But the truth is that it is politicians that contest elections. If you say that those in the diaspora will vote on the basis of knowledge or on the basis of competency of individuals, that may still be at the realm of speculation, because those in the country know the politicians and political parties better. But I believe that Nigerians, wherever they are, as long as they are Nigerians, and they are desirous of voting, should be giving an opportunity of voting. However, in giving them that opportunity, we must work out how best they can vote and how to guarantee the electoral process so that it is not manipulated or skewed to favour any individual or group.”
Reacting to some of the points raised by the INEC spokesman, a political analyst and lecturer at the department of Petroleum Engineering, University of Benin, Edo State, Onaiwu Oduwa, said that apart from knowing how many Nigerians are overseas and having a reliable database of Nigerians, we have to perfect how to secure the votes that would come in before or during the general election.
Though he said that he was not against diaspora voting, he however stressed on the need for voters’ education and sensitization of those in the diaspora.
According to him, some of those in the diaspora have been away for more than 10 years and are no longer in tune with the socio-economic and political realities in Nigeria.
“For instance,” he stated, “a bag of beans now costs N100, 000. Someone in Canada who was probably here when the same bag was N5, 000 may never understand how bad the situation is here. Thus, if the diaspora must vote, they must be in sync with happenings in the country.”
The university don also stated unequivocally that politicians will gain more from diaspora voting because they have all the machinery and resources they can use to capture those in the diaspora.
